Hello Redoakleaf, I'm ThatOneMushroomGuy and I'll be the TA handling your critique today.

Arrows

Starting with your arrows your linework is looking confident and smooth, this helps to communicate the fluidity that arrows have as they move across the page. Your added lineweight is also well executed along with your shading which is added to the correct side of the bends, this helps reinforce the illusion of depth you wish to achieve.

Overall you've done really well in this exercise, the only thing I can mention that will help you keep developing your skills when tackling this exercise again is to start going a step further and push yourself out of your comfort zone, your arrows have little overlaps to them and are all very similar in their perspective and rate of foreshortening, which suggests you're avoiding more challenging types of arrows, be it consciously or without knowing. But don't be afraid of adding more bends and overlaps to these structures, as this is the thing that'll push you to engage your brain and think critically about not only how these objects look, but also how they work.

Leaves

For your attempt at the leaves exercise, the initial construction for your leaf structures is looking pretty fluid and energetic, but the thick lineweight you add on top often takes this confidence away, leaving your leaf structures stiff and awkward. Keep all phases of your construction roughly consistent in the line thickness that they use, in order to not encourage you to draw more than you strictly need to.

The second thing is something which isn't an outright mistake but does end up missing the point of the exercise and what it seeks to teach you and that's the fact that you're not drawing any of your leaves with any kind of fold or overlap. As explained in the intro to this exercise leaves are objects which are very easily influenced by outside forces such as the wind or gravity, so when approaching this exercise, think of the forces that push through these leaves, and draw them with an awareness of how they flow through space, this includes drawing them bending and folding over themselves.

This is especially important because when tackling actual plant structures you'll find that it's very rare that all leaf structures in your reference will have no folds or bends, so it's very useful to start tackling these kinds of leaves as early as you can, otherwise they start to feel like flat stickers glued to your page, instead of the tridimensional and free-flowing objects that they are.

Another thing you should keep in mind is the complex leaf construction method since for this leaf structure you end up skipping construction steps which causes the leaf structure to be less solid and structurally sound than it could be.

Your application of edge detail is looking pretty decent, just remember that as with most other methods introduced in this course it's preferred that you work with edge detail in an additive manner, instead of cutting back into your previous construction.

The texture in your leaves is leaning towards the explicit side, you can find here some useful notes on how to think when approaching leaf textures in the future.

Branches

Your branches are coming along pretty decently as you're generally following the instructions for the exercise, it's good to see that you're extending your lines, but remember how branches should be approached, by having your segment start at the first ellipse, extending it past the second ellipse and fully to the halfway point to the third ellipse, currently you're not always extending your lines up to the halfway point between ellipses which is makes it harder for you to achieve a nice transition between segments.

Something else you should focus on are your ellipses degrees, you're clearly making an attempt to vary your degrees but some of them barely change when they should due to how the ellipse degree shift works, as shown here. Remember that as a cylindrical form shifts towards or away from the viewer, the degree of the ellipses within that structure will also shift.

Try not to cut into your ellipses, make sure to always start your new segment at the outermost perimeter of your ellipse in order to keep all stray marks inside the structure.

Plant Construction Section

Onto your plant constructions your work is generally looking good, you're generally sticking to the instructions which is helping you draw structures that feel solid and have actual volume to them, in other words, tridimensional objects. However there are a couple of important issues that you must address when tackling these exercises again in the future.

Firstly, and perhaps the most important point of all is to remember that these methods and techniques are introduced for a reason, that being, these are the methods that will not only help make your work feel the most solid and tridimensional, but also the methods that will help you get the most out of Drawabox and each study session.

So always apply the methods when they're relevant, don't skip construction steps like you did for this construction and this part of this structure to cite some examples, by not drawing the stems with the correct branch construction method you end up leaving relationships between forms vague and undefined, and you flatten your drawing as it's left with no sense of thickness or volume.

Another important point that relates back to skipping construction steps is how you're relying on zigzagging your edge detail and working subtractively with your construction of it quite frequently.

Even though edge detail is called edge detail it's actually a different, more small and contained phase of construction, as such these small lines will communicate to your viewer what the more contained and small forms of your structure are, so it's important to think through each and every one of your marks, instead of haphazardly executing them which will hurt the solidity of your work. It's also important to remember that zigzagging your lines goes against the third mark-making principle from Lesson 1. So make sure to give your details the time they need, drawing them carefully and making sure no single mark is trying to capture more than one bump at a time, otherwise you'll lose control of your line.

You'll want to address the hesitancy in your linework, as the wobbles in the linework for the stem in this construction harm the solidity of the structure.

Another issue present in this construction is the fact that you drew the flower pot two times, making it unclear what the actual form of the vase should be, the first, or the second? This lack of clarity only serves to remind the viewer that they're looking at flat lines on a page, rather than a believable solid object.

Make sure to never back into your forms, while edge detail can in some level be applied subtractively you'll really want to stick with additive construction for your more organic forms, we can see some examples of how to build up on top of forms which aren't already flat here. When you encounter a bump or form that exists in your reference you'll want to build it up gradually on top of your preexisting construction, making sure that you're adding this complexity as their own forms.

The reason why you don't want to cut back into the silhouette of a form is because its silhouette is just a shape on the page which represents the form we're drawing, but its connection to that form is entirely based on its current shape. If you change that shape, you won't alter the form it represents - you'll just break the connection, leaving yourself with a flat shape. We can see this most easily in this example of what happens when we cut back into the silhouette of a form here.

• When constructing cylindrical objects such as flower pots and mushrooms make sure that you're starting with a minor axis in order to keep your several ellipses aligned to one another. Going further, fully construct the flower pot and not just it's overall primitive form, flower pots also have rims which should be built up with their own ellipses in order to indicate the change in the pot's form, as well as to indicate the thickness of the rim itself before the inside of the pot.

Final Thoughts

Your work has a lot of potential and your constructions are showing a good deal of solidity and understanding of the spatial reasoning. Your homework is only being held back due to a couple of bumps and mistakes which come from either not applying the methods as thoroughly as they should be, or perhaps a smidge of rushing and not paying a much attention when working on these exercises as you should.

In the future, follow the instructions as closely as they ought to be, always applying the methods and techniques where they become relevant so you can get the most out of these exercises. I'm going to be marking this lesson as complete as I believe you'll be able to address the points I've mentioned today without much difficulty. Good luck in lesson 4.